


Tarnish the Golden Rule

by alouette_des_champs



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Between seasons 4 and 5, Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, F/F, Hunt!Daisy, Not Canon Compliant, Spoilers for The Magnus Archives Season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:20:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26228581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alouette_des_champs/pseuds/alouette_des_champs
Summary: Basira breaks her promise twice before the world ends.
Relationships: Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	Tarnish the Golden Rule

**Author's Note:**

> I have nothing to say except I made myself very sad writing this and now you too shall be very sad reading it.
> 
> Title from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6xEkNMg25E (I know this is a cover but I like it better lol)

Basira had been thinking a lot about those women who sent love letters to serial killers in prison. She’d spent a long time dismissing them as crazy, but now she thought she was beginning to understand their logic.

Maybe it wasn’t weakness or stupidity or desperation that drove them. Maybe it had nothing at all to do with good and evil. Maybe they felt a terrible awe for what they must have seen as the most powerful beings in their narrow universe. Maybe it felt like tonguing the bloody space a knocked-out tooth left behind, searching for the bright pain of the nerve. Maybe it was the deep, sick need to harness violence itself and use it to fulfill your most selfish desires.

Maybe she just had too much time alone with her thoughts.

*

Daisy was terrible at covering her tracks. She was too used to being the apex predator; nobody and nothing willingly sought out its own death. It didn’t take Basira long to track her down, camping out in a small copse of trees on the overgrown back end of a suburban park. 

She still mostly looked like herself, but the longer Basira watched her, the more her edges seemed to flicker, hinting at a more monstrous shape seething beneath ordinary flesh. She was gathering brush, presumably for a fire, tossing twigs and dry clumps of moss onto a small pile. Basira raised her gun, aimed it, and held it there. And held it there, and held it there, and held it there…

Everyone, even Daisy herself, wanted Basira to mourn, wanted her to believe that Daisy was no longer present in the body before her, but she just couldn’t do it. They were all so quick to discount the close connection of muscle and mind, the memories that were inextricably stored in electrical impulse and the release of neurotransmitters. She had spent years softening Daisy up like stiff leather with only the heat of her hands, months patching her back together in the Archives. The body she was pointing her pistol at was the same body she had painstakingly re-fed after being starved underground, the same body whose wasted muscles she had helped to build back up from nothing, the same body that had trembled and heaved in her arms in the throes of pain and panic. Maybe it was self-absorbed of her, but Basira couldn’t help but think that Daisy’s body was as much _hers_ as it was Daisy’s.

As Basira held her arm steady for moment after moment of agonizing indecision, Daisy turned and looked right through the foliage and the shadows that should have obscured her.

“Should’ve pulled the trigger before you had time to think about it,” she called, like a disappointed instructor correcting their pupil. “You’ll never do it now, not even if I stand here all night.”

Basira re-holstered her gun and breathed out, already turning back the way she had come. Shame and rage and relief roared through her, but she forced herself to keep walking.

*

In the life before, what had she done in between necessary tasks? What had she enjoyed? It was hard to remember, even harder to try and fill the television snow of her life with entertainment that felt miserable and meaningless to her now. Basira couldn’t even turn the radio on in her car; every time she tried, despair rose up from her gut like bile. Music was for other people, normal people, people who weren’t branded with a pact like hers. 

She felt so empty sometimes that she worried she might collapse in on herself like a dead star.

The only person she talked to was Martin. He called her once or twice a week from a payphone in Scotland. It was the only time she felt even remotely like a human being, but she still dreaded the sound of her phone ringing. It took her far too long to realize that it was because she _resented_ him. Martin had won his battle. The hard part was over, and now he got to play house with Jon for as long as he liked. Basira didn’t have that luxury, the luxury of time. She never would.

What was she going to do after this hunt was over? Who would she be? What would she have?

*

Over the next few weeks, Basira tailed Daisy out to the bleak cradle of the countryside. She finally pinned her down in a derelict field that spread out around the ruin of an abandoned barn, the whole scene shades of amber and indigo in the dusk. Basira crouched behind a short, scrubby three at the edge of the field and took Daisy’s advice to heart. She fired the gun before she could think twice, but she couldn’t stop herself from closing her eyes at the last minute. The shot went wide; she heard the bullet strike wood as it found the side of the barn. A blanket of birds lifted from the trees, their numbers temporarily blackening the sky. A harsh laugh rang out like a second shot. 

Basira cursed to herself and made to retreat, to prepare for her next attempt, but the sound of Daisy’s voice stopped her.

“I’ve missed you, out here,” she called.

 _She’s just trying to get you out in the open,_ Basira told herself savagely. Not that it really mattered; she had already decided to fall for it. Without holstering her gun, she stood up from behind the tree and stepped around to the other side, never taking her eyes off the other woman’s position. Daisy was outlined dark against the sky, her posture relaxed, tall and slender and pulsing with danger.

“Are you going to make me chase you?” she asked. Her light, teasing tone caught Basira off-guard, set her teeth on edge.

“That isn’t funny, Daisy.”

Suddenly, Daisy charged forward, aiming low to hit her center of gravity. Basira sidestepped, but the other woman still caught her around the waist. She drove an elbow into Daisy’s solar plexus, a hit that could have dropped a grown man where he stood, but Daisy didn’t even seem to feel the impact. After a blurry moment of struggle, Basira broke free from the hold and sprinted for the sparse cover of the barn.

Daisy caught up with her right at the entrance of the splintered structure. She used her momentum to toss Basira through the door and into a pile of moldy hay. Basira tried to get back to her feet, but before she could even roll out of the way, Daisy was on her. She wouldn’t give up that easily; she thrashed, scraping her elbows against fragments of wooden floorboards. She only managed to get one good blow in with her knee before Daisy sat on her legs, immobilizing them. It wasn’t a fair fight; Basira could feel the unnatural torque and twist of Daisy’s muscles as she finally riveted Basira’s wrists to the ground with an iron grip. She lay there, panting, her hair thick with straw and dirt and sweat, glaring at the woman looming above her.

“Well, you’ve got me,” Basira said, as wryly as she could manage. “What are you going to do with me? Rip out my still-beating heart and eat it raw?”

With a low chuckle, Daisy pressed the blunt edge of her teeth to Basira’s unprotected neck, a symbolic kill. She traced her jugular with the tip of her nose, hot breath fanning over her skin. She smelled like unwashed skin, fresh blood, and the rushing-wind smell of outside. It should have been unpleasant, but there was something about it that Basira found almost comforting. Maybe it was pheromones, whatever animal chemicals drew you home to a lover’s sweat, or maybe she was just relieved that it was a human smell.

“You’ve been reading too many fairy stories.” Daisy’s voice was a hum, a barely-audible vibration that Basira felt more than heard. With an infuriating agility, Daisy brought Basira’s hands together and pinned them with one hand. She rested her free hand loosely over her throat. There were new calluses on her palm, rough edges and raised scars that Basira didn’t recognize. She was perversely jealous of whoever had been the object of those other hunts, the other throats that had undoubtedly given way under the suffocating heat of Daisy’s hand.

“Are you afraid of me?”

Basira held her gaze. Daisy’s eyes were the same pale, inscrutable blue they had always been. Basira set her jaw in its most stubborn position as the other woman began to squeeze her throat, tightening her grip by degrees.

“You sure?”

As her airway constricted , Basira began to feel like she was floating, tingling. Dying, at a sensual pace. Part of her wished that Daisy _would_ kill her, take the choice away from her, make things nice and even. Part of her was done fighting, done hunting, ready to lie back and let her fizzling vision fade to black, let her choking give way to silence. It hurt, of course, but it wasn’t even the worst pain Basira had ever experienced. It would be so easy, easier than anything in her life had ever been. 

All at once, the pressure was gone. She hauled in a lungful of air with a ragged, crackling sound. Her vision squirmed with amoeba-like spots as everything began to resolve back into its proper shape. In reality, it had only been a matter of seconds, but it felt like she had been in limbo for an hour, cozying up to a warm darkness she hadn’t properly feared in a long time. She felt a weight lift away from her; it took her a moment to realize that Daisy slid onto the ground beside her. She leaned down close to her face, pressing her hot forehead against Basira’s.

“Still my girl,” she murmured. Basira reached up with a shaking hand and cupped Daisy’s cheek. Her skin was still warm, still natural, still real. Daisy leaned into the touch, pressing her nose, her lips into her palm.

“I’ll see you again,” Daisy said, half-question and half-affirmation. 

“I promised, didn’t I?” Basira replied hoarsely. She ran her thumb over Daisy’s prominent cheekbone, hungry and weather-roughened. She was suffering. Basira could see that, she could feel it emanating from her like deadly radiation. She had promised to end that suffering. There was no way around that fact, the bluntness and the starkness and the bloodcurdling reality of it.

The next time, she would shoot before she could think and keep her eyes wide open the whole time. Basira was the one who did what had to be done, always.


End file.
